


99 Problems (But A Vault Ain’t One)

by Ladytalon



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Abduction, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Domestic, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, F/M, Family Drama, Forgiveness, Humor, Love, Reconciliation, Relationship(s), The Forbidden Brother, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-08
Updated: 2020-01-08
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:01:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22166824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ladytalon/pseuds/Ladytalon
Summary: Zed doesn’t mind change...just as long as it happens to somebody else.
Relationships: Zed Blanco/Patricia Tannis
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	99 Problems (But A Vault Ain’t One)

There's no way to tell that the day about to begin is one you'll wind up remembering forever. Zed's alarm goes off right in his ear and he fights his way out of the warm blankets to slam a hand down on it and burrow right back beneath the covers. Patricia yawns at him, angling her body so that her legs twine with his. "It is too early to be alive," she whispers urgently, "and I require your manly bulk to keep me content."

Zed opens an eye to look at her, smiling as she tries to haul him over to her side of the bed. "You sure got a way with words, woman."

"I _did_ refer to you as manly. You are fortunate I forbore to mention the mass of hair that adorns your chest," she points out. "It has nearly achieved sentience."

Reminding her that he'd trimmed it just two days earlier does no good, and her complaints redouble when Zed attempts to leave the bed. "In case you forgot, I musta drank ten gallons of water last night…and don't you _dare_ try to get me hard. Let me go and I'll come right back after."

Patricia makes a disgusted sound and rolls into the warm spot Zed leaves behind when he gets up. "Rinse it off, please."

"I _know_ …" It's as cold as the Fridge once he gets out of the bed and she starts whining again when Zed tucks his clothing in with her. "Warm 'em up for me and I'll make it worth your while," he says on his way to the bathroom. She shouts a suggestion at him, and is still talking her head off when he's washing up. 

Her words trail off into a sudden silence that Zed doesn't register because he's concentrating on brushing his teeth, but then she charges past him to vomit into the toilet. "I still feel nauseous," Patricia says in a small voice as he crouches down beside her to rub her back.

"You eat somethin' funky last night? Thought you just got the- _whoa!_ " Zed supports her when she lunges forward to empty out her stomach again, though nothing seems to be coming up but bile. She looks up at him apologetically as he brushes her hair back to check her temperature on her forehead. Everything _seems_ to be okay, except for the fact that she clearly doesn't feel that way. "C'mon, let's getcha back in bed where it's warm."

He flushes the toilet, washes his hands again, and wipes her mouth gently before carrying her back to their bed. "I don't want to soil the bedclothes," Patricia tells him, and it's just about the most pathetic thing he's ever seen as she curls up and looks at him with those big green eyes.

"Don't you worry 'bout nothin'," he assures her, moving out to the tiny kitchen to retrieve the first container he can find. It happens to be a bedpan and Zed's not too sure of why that's up in his living unit and not down in the clinic, but he's not going to complain because it's perfect. It’s also clean, so that’s a plus. He fills a glass with some water, grabs a few clean-looking towels, and brings it all back to Patricia. "Here, got you some stuff… just keep this up here with you, okay? Don't worry 'bout it if you miss, these old blankets need washin' anyways."

Patricia takes a drink of water to rinse her mouth out, spitting it back out into the pan at his urging, and Zed dumps it out of the window before bringing the basin back to her. "Thank you," she says, touching her fingers to her forehead and closing her eyes. "I do not understand why I feel so wretched."

"I'll have a word with Moxxi. Those steaks mighta gone off…that's prob'ly all it is, but you'd best stay up here 'til you feel better – no runnin' off to ogle some Eridian whatsits." Zed gives her a frown to make sure she knows that he's being completely serious, and Patricia shakes her head with a sound of exasperation.

"I was under the impression that you had work to do, you meddling…physician," she says, unable to think of anything more scathing. "As pleasing as your nude form is, I'm not sure it's entirely appropriate to conduct your daily business in such a manner."

"Y'know, I was _wonderin'_ why it felt s'darn drafty in here." Zed retrieves his clothing from beneath the covers and pulls it on, sitting on the edge of the bed to put on his boots. "Dunno how much business is waitin' but I'll be back up to check on you, okay?" Patricia nods and closes her eyes when he bends down to kiss her forehead. “Be good.”

Zed flips on the lights in the clinic, powering up the sign outside before unlocking the door. There isn’t anyone waiting outside when he sticks his head out to check, and the organ donation bin remains stubbornly empty. Another day without a decent spleen, Zed thinks to himself.

He heads back inside and pulls a box of Anshin needles out from under the table in the private examination area, then opens the med vendors to restock. After filling it back up and checking the shields – he’d seen at least three people buy some – Zed locks the vendors back up and drums his fingers on his desk as he tries to calculate how many InstaHealths he’ll have to swap out in Fyrestone’s vendor. He really should stop refilling the thing since he’s the only one who can get at it, but he _likes_ knowing his machine is still up and running there.

A few customers trickle in, fresh from a fight in Moxxi’s, so Zed does a decent trade in Body Spackle and tries out the new sutures Ned’s been developing. He’s 89% sure they haven’t been exposed to zombie serum, or whatever the hell it’s called, but Zed makes sure they stop back in within 30 hours so he can take a look.

Once he’s by himself again, he checks his ECHO to see that it’s been two hours already and Patricia hasn’t come down yet. Zed latches the front door and goes back up the stairs to check on her as promised, only to find that she’s moved into his spot in the bed and is curled up fast asleep. It doesn’t look as though she’s used the basin, but he moves it to where she’ll be able to see it when she wakes up and dumps the water out to bring her fresh. Her color looks better, he's pleased to notice, and Patricia murmurs when Zed strokes her hair before withdrawing.

Another hour passes before she shows signs of life; he’s just closed the clinic to come check on her again and is bending over her to check her pulse. “What are you doing?” Patricia startles him by asking, opening her eyes to look at him.

“Worryin’ about _you_ ,” he says in relief. “How you feelin’, sweetheart?”

She sits up slowly, rubbing at the creases on her face that the pillowcase left her with. “I feel as though I could go back to sleep again…but I’ve spent too much time asleep already.”

“Want me to check you out, downstairs?” Zed offers, knowing that she’s just going to say no. 

“No…”

“Why don't you stay up here and rest, if you’re still tired? I’d feel a whole lot better knowin’ you’re here - _safe_ \- than if you were tryin’ to go home and somethin’ happened.”

Patricia looks at him fondly. “What could possibly happen to me on the way home?”

Zed holds up a hand and begins ticking points off of his fingers. “You could slip and break somethin’, you could fall through the cracks of the generator, you could fall off past the shield, you could pass out an’ _die_ in a pool of your own sick…”

“Your imagination seems to have grown three sizes while I was asleep, you ridiculous man,” she interrupts. “Especially the part about me hurling myself off of Sanctuary’s edge.”

“Knowin’ you, there’d be some way you’d manage it. C’mon, honey. Please.”

Patricia gives in a good deal more graciously than he’d thought she might, which means that she obviously feels worse than she’s letting on. “I am unfamiliar with the common symptoms of food poisoning,” she tells him in a leading sort of way.

“Well, considering that nothin’ about this damned planet is common…you got the vomiting part on lock, that’s for sure.” Zed tilts his head up to look at the ceiling, searching his memory. “Some folks get fatigue after the fact and some weakness, too. You musta really got hammered by whatever was in those steaks, though. Want a needle or two?” He doesn’t like to push InstaHealths on anyone who isn’t in urgent need of one, and a body _could_ get addicted to them, but Patricia is clearly in need of relief.

“Yes, please.”

Zed rummages through the beat-up trunk at the end of their bed and pulls out a metal container of needles, then comes around to reach for her arm. Patricia makes the slightest noise of discomfort when he’s administering the injection, but sighs as the worst of her symptoms are immediately banished. “You go on an’ get a bit more rest, okay? I’ll bring you somethin’ that’s fit for your stomach to handle when I close up.”

She nods and closes her eyes as he leans over her and kisses the top of her head, drawing the covers up to her chin. “Thank you.”

Poor thing’s so damned miserable, she’s throwing good manners out left, right, and center. Zed smiles and moves over to the windows, opening the curtains just enough for the light of his clinic’s sign to filter in.

He leaves her asleep and still curled up on his side of the bed.

Patricia feels better the next morning, which leads Zed to believe that it really _had_ been the steaks after all, but promptly loses her lunch before she even has any. “I’m fine,” Patricia tells him. 

“Uh huh,” Zed says, eyeing her.

“I simply stood up too quickly.”

“I’m sure you did.”

“You don’t believe me.”

“I do not,” Zed agrees. He thinks it’s time to run a test or three and finds it necessary to hunt her down once she gets wind of his plan, but Patricia has to stop to vomit into a dumpster so he catches her easily enough. She scowls at him the whole way back to the clinic.

There’s one glaringly obvious answer to this mystery - especially since it involves vomiting, fatigue, _and_ that complaint of her breasts being sore the other night – but it’s crazy as hell and Zed doesn’t even want to _think_ about it, so he runs the other tests first before he asks her to pee on a stick. 

“What is this?” Patricia asks, taking the tiny device and peering at it curiously. “This doesn’t look very scientific.”

He folds his arms across his chest and leans back against the rim of the sink. “It’s old, but they give accurate results. ‘Fore we go up so you can try it, though, I…I gotta ask. Those contraceptive jabs I been orderin’ for you – honey, d’you even take ‘em?”

It takes a minute for her to fully process the question and, when she does, she looks mad as hell. Rightly so, he has to admit. “Zed, I hope you are not implying what it sounds as if you are implying,” she says, her eyes narrowing dangerously.

Zed lifts his hands in a peacemaking gesture. “Lemme rephrase that, okay? I just meant… sometimes you might forget to do it in time, that’s all. I know you wouldn’t just trash the needles.”

“That,” she says, jabbing a finger at him, “is a ‘back-pedal’ if I have ever heard one.”

“I’m sorry! I’m kinda freakin’ out ‘cause…’cause… look, let’s just go take the test an’ see what it says.”

Patricia makes a little growling noise and shoves her nose into the air, somehow managing to swish her way past him. Zed sighs and puts the ‘Back Soon’ sign on the door before locking it and following her.

If she’s not pregnant, then there aren’t many things left that can easily explain her illness.. He’ll definitely keep trying to figure it out, of course, but Zed isn’t sure what to do if that test comes back positive. It’s not like either of them are exactly parent material. There are so many things that could go wrong – babies are small, so what if he dropped it? Skags could run off with it in seconds flat. _Bandits_ could run off with it and have it for lunch with a side salad. What if they managed to keep the bitty thing alive long enough for it to crawl right off the edge of Sanctuary?

On the other hand… a baby could be a good thing. You could teach them things, and carry them with you. Zed wouldn’t _really_ mind having a baby to cuddle, especially a little girl who looks just like her momma. He would teach her everything he knows, and just love the hell out of her and she’d be so _smart_ –

He’s jerked away from his thoughts by Patricia emerging from the tiny bathroom with the stick in her hand. She doesn’t look like something life changing has just happened, and Zed forces away an unreasonable amount of disappointment. “I can run s’more tests, but I’ll need to look up some stuff on the ECHOnet first so I can get a better idea of what might be the trouble,” he says.

Patricia walks up to him and hands over the test. “I do not feel as though I am ready to become a mother.”

“It ain’t for everybody; don’t worry over it,” Zed advises, taking the pregnancy test and reaching over to drop it in the garbage. As it falls in, he catches a glimpse of the front panel and lunges to catch it. The trash is promptly knocked all over the place and he’s fallen out of his chair, bringing the tiny stick up to his eyes because he just can’t believe what he’s seeing. “Trish, this says you’re…!” 

“I just _said_ that I do not feel as though – are you going to roll around on the floor for very much longer, or are you nearly finished?” she demands, standing over him.

Zed pushes himself up onto his knees and flings his arms around her waist. Then he remembers that he shouldn’t be squeezing so hard and loosens his grip. “This is…holy _shit_ , Tricia! There’s gonna be a _baby!_ ” He’s not going to drop it, or let _anything_ run off with it, or whatever the hell else he’d just been thinking of. Nothing’s going to go wrong, because he won’t allow it. He just won’t.

Patricia rests her hands atop his head and when he looks up at her, she smiles slightly. “I suppose this means that you are happy with the results.”

“Well,” he says, heaving himself fully upright and wincing at the cartilage grinding in his knees, “All that really matters is that _you_ are.”

She places her hands on her stomach, frowning slightly. “I do not know yet.”

“Just let me know soon’s you figure it out, okay?” Zed does some frowning of his own. “Speakin’ of figurin’ stuff out…how the _hell_ did this happen in the first place?”

Patricia laughs at him. “If I had to guess, it has much to do with the pair of us in heated sexual congress.”

“I know _that_ , you li’l smartass. I just meant that if you’ve been takin’ those shots on the regular…wait. You still have some left from the last batch, right?”

She does, and leaves for her house to find the packages for him. Zed takes his urge to follow and protect her, and does his best to squash it flat – she’ll be fine, and the last thing she needs is for him to start hovering. If she decides that she likes the idea of having a baby, _then_ he’ll hover.

He has Pickle waiting for him when he unlocks the clinic, which serves as a fine distraction from current events. Apparently the kid’s gotten himself some weird fungal infection in an unmentionable area, and thinks it’s cute to lie his tail off about how he came by the infection in the first place. Zed threatens to amputate everything in the vicinity and Pickle threatens to drown him in a flood of tears because he actually thinks Zed’s serious.

The truth finally comes out and it’s just stupid enough to be something a kid like Pickle would do. Zed keeps a watchful eye on the clinic’s door as he lectures the boy on how to better protect himself the next time he does something so dumb. “Or you could just ask Tina out on a damn date already,” he says when Patricia flies through the door with one hand over her mouth. “Uh oh. There’s a bucket; _use the-!_ ”

Well, the floor has a drain for this very reason.

Zed manages to get Pickle out of the splash zone with three tubes of antibiotic cream, and makes the kid turn his pockets inside out once the door closes behind them. “If that don’t clear up in seven days, come on back. And for Pete’s sake, Davis, quit stealin’ my stuff!” 

Patricia is rinsing her mouth out when he comes back in, intent upon testing the liquid in the syringes that she’s brought. She moves over to watch him uncap the needle and squirt a few drops into the small bowl he uses to crush pills. “How, precisely, do you expect to determine its efficacy?”

He lifts the bowl, intending to take it up to where some of his equipment is stored in the kitchen, but pauses when he gets a whiff of something familiar. “Hang on, now.” Zed breathes in deeply. “What the…? God _damn_ it.”

“What is it?” Patricia asks. 

“Here,” he orders, holding it out to her. “What’s that smell like, to you?”

She leans down and sniffs experimentally, then looks up at him. “Are you going to tell me,” Patricia says icily, “that I have been injecting scythid oil into myself?”

Zed carefully places it inside the sink before he gives into the impulse to hurl the thing across the damned clinic. “Technically, _I_ did – last time you asked me, remember? Jesus fuckin’ _wept_.” He rubs his hands over his face, entertaining thoughts of ripping the limbs off of the person responsible. “I’ll need to contact everyone who bought from this batch. Oh, fuck me.”

“It is because I did, that we are in this predicament,” she says, trying to make him laugh…and he might, if they were the only ones who ever used those needles. “Call your brother and ask him for help.”

“Right; I can just see him now, callin’ up folks and yellin’ out ‘it’s a boy!’ before he hangs up. Ned could maybe help with shipment tracking, though.”

Patricia settles into a chair with a warm blanket and her ECHO device, ready to deliver some scathing commentary, and Zed leaves her to it while he contacts his brother. Leaving out the part where he’s one of the customers affected, Zed explains the situation and Ned is bored enough to help out without too much complaint. Once that task’s accomplished, he contacts Nina to see if her supply has been swapped – Nina has him wait while she gets a case of needles from her office so he gets to watch Timber Logwood hanging from the ceiling for an uncomfortable minute before he can hear an explosion of profanity coming from offscreen. Well, that answers _that_ question.

Zed spends the next few hours checking his files and cross-referencing them with the tracking information that Ned sends him, then starts the unenviable task of notifying those affected. A quick glance to the side shows that Patricia has abandoned her ECHO device and is curled up asleep, so Zed goes about his business and finds her still sleeping soundly once he’s finally finished notifying those that need it.

It’s easier than he would have expected to scoop her up in his arms and carry her to bed, where she makes a soft sound of protest at the cold sheets. Zed curls up beside Patricia to help keep her warm, intending to close his eyes for just a minute or so, but ends up falling asleep with his face buried in her hair.

He wakes with a start when someone starts banging on the clinic door, and Zed nearly falls off onto the floor as he tries to figure out which way is up. “Hey, _doc_ ,” Salvador yells from ground level, and Zed leans out the window to look. “Open up; Axton needs some help.”

“Be right there,” Zed yells back. He closes the window and rubs at his eyes blearily, wondering where he’s put his boots _this_ time. A quick glance at the bed has him wondering where he’s put his girl, too, because it looks like she’s escaped while he’d been napping. Probably sneaked out to do some kind of experiment, he thinks. Well, he’ll catch up to her easily enough once he’s sewn Axton back up. That kid is _always_ needing stitches for some damn fool thing. They’d probably been trying to tickle Terramorphous with a rakk feather again.

Sure enough, once he gets down there it turns out that Axton has yet another head wound bleeding all over Zed’s mostly-kinda-sorta clean floor. “So, funny story-”

“I’m not sure I even wanna know,” Zed says shortly, pulling on a pair of gloves and grabbing a spool of surgical thread. “Can’t y’all get him a _helmet?_ This boy’s been hit in the head so many times, it’s a wonder he don’t think he’s two years old again,” he sighs.

Salvador grins and nudges his friend. “Who says he doesn’t, eh?”

“Don’t do that; it hurts to move,” Axton groans. “We were trying to catch Mothrakk.”

Zed’s sure that, one of these days, he’ll roll his eyes and wind up seeing the inside of his own skull. “If you got hit any harder, you’d catch up with her for sure – Lilith killed her when I was still livin’ in Fyrestone.”

“ _Son_ of Mothrakk,” Salvador corrects. “The one in the Wildlife Exploitation Preserve.”

“If you say so,” he says, threading the needle and dipping the point into a container of Body Spackle. “Hold still…y’all are too new t’hear of Rakkinishu, I think. Mean old bastard used to flap around the Rust Commons back in the day; my broth-” Zed catches himself before he can use the plural. “Broth _er_ and me used to try to ride it when we were kids.” 

He quickly pierces Axton’s skin while the commando is distracted. “Really? Did you ever - _ow!_ \- do it?”

“Nah. Damn thing breathed fire, so we could never get close enough. Salvador, hand me that – no, over _there_. Yeah, that.” Zed takes the syringe from the other man and inserts it next to the wound, only dispensing a small amount so that it won’t heal the gash immediately and leave a nasty scar. Not that Axton doesn’t deserve one, for all the foolishness the kid gets up to, but Zed doesn’t want to hear the constant whining that’s sure to follow if he spoils Axton’s good looks.

Zed lets the Vault Hunters’ conversation roll off of him as he concentrates on spacing the stitches evenly before tying up the thread and snipping the end off against the knot. “All done, doc?” Axton asks hopefully.

“You’re good for now,” Zed says, doing a final inspection of his handiwork. “Keep it clean ‘til it’s healed, then have Salvador here pull the stitches. _Carefully_ , else I’ll need to redo the whole damned thing and I _will_ charge double.”

Salvador immediately mimes yanking on the thread and fills the clinic with his bellow of laughter. “I’ll keep him out of the mud,” the gunzerker promises, digging through his pockets and picking through the lint to find Zed’s fee. He supposes that it’s just as well that he hasn’t taken off his gloves yet, and extends his hand as Salvador reaches out with a handful of crumpled bills and dirty coins.

And yes, there’s plenty of lint mixed in.

“How’d you get back here so fast, anyway?” Axton asks, examining his stitches in the mirror Zed hands him after dumping his payment into a metal bowl he’d punched holes into for this very reason.

Zed rinses off the coins and sets his makeshift colander aside to drain. “Back from where? I been here all day,” he says idly, already mentally dismissing his patrons. She’s probably at one of her dig sites if she hasn’t just gone home – he’ll definitely find her anywhere but in Sanctuary if she thinks that he’s still going to be a mother rakk about her pregnancy.

Her _pregnancy._ He still can’t believe it.

“So that wasn’t you we saw with Doctor Tannis out by Three Horns?”

A- _ha!_ Zed thinks. The little sneak’s out in Three Horns…though why she’d want Ned with her is anyone’s guess. “You musta got hit harder’n you thought.” He sends them on their way with two more syringes, and reaches for his ECHO device.

Ned answers, looking harassed. “ _What’d’you want **now**?_”

“Hello to you, too. Why’d you - ” Zed breaks off as he realizes that Ned’s in his house in Hallows End. “You’re home?”

“ _Where the hell else would I be? In Oasis havin’ a swim?_ ”

“You left Tricia at her site…by herself?” Zed asks, confused. 

Ned is looking at him like he’s gone insane. “ _I didn’t leave her nowhere; I been here all day.”_

Maybe Axton really _had_ hit his head too hard…or maybe Patricia’s been kidnapped by someone who they hadn’t looked at closely enough. It would be easy to just _assume_ that anyone with her would be him, because it almost always is. Zed feels his stomach start twisting into a tight knot of worry. It could be nothing, but he just can’t take that chance. “I think…I think someone’s taken her,” he confesses to his brother. “Vault Hunter saw her with somebody an’ thought it was me.”

“ _Where?_ ” Ned asks sharply, all traces of irritation wiped from his face. “ _I’ll meet you.”_

They make plans to meet up in Three Horns Valley, but Zed doesn’t realize until he’s at the Fast Travel that Axton hadn’t clarified which _part_ of Three Horns. He could drive around the valley all day and not spot hide nor hair of her if she’s been taken to the divide instead. Patricia might even be down in Sanctuary Hole right now, with all those bandits.

He’s digistructed out by the Happy Pig Motel and smoothes his hair back with shaking hands as he looks around. Ned isn’t there yet, of course, since he’ll need to work his way back into Jakobs Cove to the only Fast Travel, so Zed paces nervously until he realizes that they’ll need a car. 

The Catch-A-Ride has clearly seen better days, what with all the skag piles and rakk droppings decorating it, but the station’s sorry condition is the least of Zed’s worries. He scrolls through the offerings more times than he needs to because he keeps pressing too hard, and he stops to take a few deep breaths until his hands quit trembling so badly. Zed picks out a Technical, knowing that they’re hardier than the Outrunners even if they’re not quite as fast – the terrain out here is a mess.

He leaves the Technical on the digistruct pads and goes back in front of the motel to pace back and forth while he waits for Ned to get a move on. “Fuck,” Zed says quietly, crossing his arms over his chest and staring out along the washed-out section of road running past the motel. She could be anywhere by now. “ _Fuck_.” If he’d been less pushy about making her rest, she’d still be in Sanctuary right now. 

Zed’s pacing takes him past the busted door of the main office and up to the notice board, where a few bounties and job offers have been posted. He glances at the papers before turning on his heel to wear a track into the ground in the other direction. 

It’s on the fourth pass that he finally realizes that one of the bounties has Patricia’s face on it. Zed stops and stares at it as he hears the Fast Travel power up. “Ned,” he says, fury quickly displacing his earlier fears, “Get your ass over here and _look at this_.” 

Ned’s footsteps crunch on the gravel behind him, and his brother halts just behind his shoulder. “Um.”

Without taking his eyes off of the poster, Zed unhooks his ECHO device from his belt and starts keying in the frequency listed on the bounty just beneath the letters that spell out _guess what, bitch?_ “Tell me right now that ain’t who I think it is.” He hits the backspace viciously upon making a mistake, and squints at the code to make sure it’s right this time. “Ned, don’t even fuck with me on this.”

Ned shifts awkwardly, guilt written all over his face when Zed looks up to see it. “He never said he’d snatch her,” his brother mumbles, just like when they were ten years old and he’d gone and done something incalculably stupid. Again. 

“Oh, ‘he never said.’ There’s a lot he ‘never said,’” Zed snarls. “Let’s start with the fact he ‘never said’ he was even still alive, but _you_ seem to know that he’s been around all this time.”

“You didn’t wanna know-”

“We were _nineteen_ , and he’d just broken Momma’s heart. God _damnit,_ Ned! Of course I didn’t wanna fuckin’ know!”

Now Ned starts getting angry, too. “You think _I_ wanted him to leave? I fuckin’ _begged_ him not to go, but it was his choice. _His_ \- not mine, not Momma’s, and not yours. _You_ were the one who said none of us could even talk about him once he was gone; well, I don’t answer t’you. We don’t turn our backs on family, Zed. Paw taught us that much – ain’t my fault you forgot it.” 

“He’s the one turned his back.” Zed turns away before he does something he’ll regret, like knocking Ned on his ass. He’ll need his brother’s help in the coming months if Patricia decides to keep the baby and it won’t be wise to antagonize Ned by breaking his jaw…no matter how much Ned deserves it. 

“He didn’t have a choice-”

First it’s Ted’s choice, and now he never have one? Typical Ned logic. “The _hell_ he didn’t! He _left_ us.”

“What was he s’posed to do here on Pandora? What kinda future did he have? Look what _I_ had, livin’ in your fuckin’ shadow.”

“It always comes back to that, don’t it? It’s always my fault, despite you bein’ a full grown man who can make his own damn choices. Ted could’ve waited ‘til Paw’s burial. _You_ could’ve stopped yourself from killin’ everyone you were responsible for healin’ in Jakobs Cove. But he didn’t, and neither did you.” Zed hits the connect and waits for his other brother to answer.

Ted has the nerve to sound irritated. “ _Will you come get this crazy broad already?”_

“Send me the coordinates first, you sack of shit-”

Ned snatches the ECHO device from his hands. “Where’d y’all go? He’s gettin’ all kindsa antsy and what were you _thinkin’_ , snatchin’ her like that?”

“ _We’re at the overlook leadin’ to the Fridge – knock it **off** , lady – and it was a pure moment of fuckin’ insanity. Come **get** her.”_

Zed can’t help smiling at the knowledge that Patricia’s making Ted’s life miserable – it’s all he deserves, and more. He cuts the connection and clips his ECHO device back on his belt. “How long’s he been here.”

Ned follows him over to the Technical. “He’s been up on Helios as one of those…whatsits. You know, the folks who try to tell the right hand what the left hand’s been doin’?”

“Liaison,” Zed grunts, climbing into the driver’s seat.

“Yeah, that’s the word. Atlas is hurtin’ for funds so they send him out to…make money.”

Zed sighs and shakes his head. He doesn’t approve of the fact that Ted had chosen to make a living working for the Atlas Corporation, much less as one of their Omega Assassins, even though he’d also made a name for himself as a medical doctor. So much for the Hippocratic Oath. “You make it sound like he’s a high-priced whore.”

“I wouldn’t put it past Atlas to farm him out like one,” Ned comments. “Some of the stories would curl your hair.”

Zed ignores him, since the only alternative is to start another fight about being kept in the dark all these years. He has a serious bone to pick with Ted, and it’s one that’s been about thirty years in the making. Zed doesn’t even know if most of the anger he’s feeling comes from relief that Ted’s still alive, or that he’s been lied to all this time. He thinks about it as he drives up to what used to be an overlook (and is now an abandoned bandit camp), and tells Ned to wait in the truck.

He hears them arguing long before he can see them, and something inside him eases now that he _knows_ that Patricia’s okay. Oh, he’s still furious at Ted for kidnapping her, along with numerous other crimes committed years ago, but Ted hadn’t hurt her. 

Ted is _alive_.

Zed hadn’t wanted to ask Athena if she’d killed him just like she’d ended the lives of the others, but it would’ve saved him a lot of heartache – and the shock he’s feeling now – if he’d just been brave enough. Well, what’s done is done and can’t be helped.

He strides forward into the camp to find his long-lost triplet struggling to hold Patricia Tannis at arm’s length while she whales on him with a section of rebar. “Get _off_ me, you whacked-out nutjob,” Ted yells.

“ _You_ need to remove your filthy hands from _me_ , charlatan!”

“Maybe both of y’all can just back away from each other at the same time,” Zed suggests, causing their heads to whip around towards him. Ted’s grip loosens enough for Patricia to twist free, and she takes the opportunity to wallop his side with the rod in her hand.

“ _Ow!_ Why, you _little_ -”

“Finish that sentence and I will strike you again,” Patricia snarls. “Zed, I completely understand why you have failed to tell me that there was a third brother skulking about the galaxy.” She feints with the rebar to make Ted flinch, then drops it at Ted’s feet contemptuously. “You obviously got the brains as well as looks.”

Zed holds his hand out for her and she accepts it, regal as a queen. “That’s true. Let’s get you home, now.”

He walks her back to the Technical, deliberately ignoring Ted, and helps her up into the truck. Ned looks at them, confused when Zed motions for him to get out. “So what’d he want?”

“Don’t know; don’t care,” Zed says, climbing into the driver’s seat. “He wants to talk, he can come to Fyrestone – whyn’t you stay here with him so he can find it? It’s been so long, he’s probably forgotten where the hell it is.” Whatever Ted wants from him, even if it’s just a simple hello, he can come home for it first…which is where he should’ve come in the first place. 

Patricia stays silent until they’re driving back onto the digistruct pads of the Catch-A-Ride. “I thought he was you.”

“I’m sorry he wasn’t.” Her hand slips into his, and Zed gives it a squeeze. “Mind if we go to Fyrestone?”

She shakes her head _no_ , so it’s back to the Badlands they go through the Fast Travel station. Patricia walks into his embrace, seizing his shirt in both her hands and rising up on her toes so that she can shove her face against his neck. “You’re all right now, honey, I promise.”

“I _know_ that,” she says, her nasty tone at odds with the way she’s snuffling at him. “I’m afraid that you are about to be covered in mucus.”

“I’ve had worse happen, so no worries.” Zed holds Patricia until her trembling stops and, true to her word, she blows her nose on him. “He didn’t…didn’t _hurt_ you, did he?” He doesn’t think that Ted would dare, but he’s got to ask.

Patricia shakes her head. “He did not, yet there were a few moments after I realized that he was neither you nor that reprobate of a twin brother…well. I shall have to call him your _triplet_ brother now, won’t I? That doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.”

“Shoulda told you before now, I guess, but it was just one of those things that – y’know, if you don’t talk about ‘em then they ain’t really true. Stupid,” Zed tells her, reaching out to brush her hair back into place with his fingers. “Where’s your goggles?”

Her hands fly up to pat at her head wildly. “That _ingrate!_ ”

“That ingrate’s comin’ over here in a few, so we can get ‘em back for you whenever he and Ned get their shit together.”

Patricia sighs and wipes her eyes, using a different section of Zed’s shirt this time. “I was _not_ crying because-”

“I know,” Zed soothes. 

“Good. Does it _look_ as if I’ve…?”

“Yup.”

She thinks out loud for a few minutes about how she can fix it so nobody can tell, and finally settles on going to wash her face. “I shall simply announce that I had to wash the stench of incompetent underhandedness from my skin, and that will be that.”

Zed gives her a thumbs-up. “Sounds like a plan.”

“Will you tell me _why_ you neglected to mention that you had a third brother, or will it remain a mystery?” 

“It’s kinda a long story and I don’t think we got time for that ‘fore they get here.”

“Shorten the story,” Patricia says. “You also might want to change your shirt.”

Zed has to laugh. She always has a way to simplify the most complex things, and vice versa. “Long story short? Uh…well, I guess that’d be when Ted cut out and joined up with Atlas about ten seconds after Paw died.”

She blinks up at him. “That is why you refuse to acknowledge him? Because he left Pandora?”

“You make it sound real dumb when you put it like _that_.”

“So it is smarter than that?” Patricia asks.

“I dunno. Maybe it’s not, after all. It’s been a long time,” Zed admits. “Time tends to make stuff like this more complicated than it really is, I guess.” Distance seems to do the same, too, he realizes – he’d sworn years ago that he could forgive Ted anything if it meant that Ted was still alive. Now that Zed’s actually seen that his brother _is_ alive, just as he’d prayed for so many times, his first reaction is anger. Maybe it’s finally time to let all that festering resentment go. “Why is it that you always seem to know what I need to hear?”

He smiles at her, she smiles back, and just like that Zed feels like a weight’s been lifted from his chest. “If you would like to tell me the rest of the story later, I will listen. For now, we both need to ready ourselves for the arrival of your brothers – if that new one so much as looks at me cross-eyed, I will render him unconscious,” Patricia declares. “Also, I have decided that we will be parents after all so you will need to prepare yourself for that eventuality.”

“Okay,” Zed promises, his heart swelling with love for her. 

Zed changes his shirt while he listens to Patricia splashing water on her face, and sits down on the corner of the bed. “You’re gonna be the best Momma anyone’s ever had,” he tells her as she accidentally pours most of the water straight down her front.

“That is highly debatable, given my various neuroses.” Patricia turns towards him, gesturing to the darkened wet spots on her clothing. “As you can see, there is plenty that is ‘wrong’ with me.”

He gazes at her, seeing not just her beauty but her strength. There’s her intelligence, her fierce loyalty to the ones she loves… Zed will forever feel honored that she’s chosen him. “All I can see is how perfect you are,” he says honestly. “And one day soon our baby’s gonna see that, too.”

Patricia bows her head, turning away from him slightly to hide her expression, and Zed lets her be while she wrestles with her emotions. Well, he leaves her alone for about ten seconds – and then he goes over to put his arms around her and tell her how much he loves her. “I’m going to have to wash my face again,” she wails.

“At this point, you could just dive head-first into the damn sink - wouldn’t make a lick of difference,” Zed teases.

She smiles through her tears, and punches him in the solar-plexus.

They hear the sounds of Ned and Ted’s arrival, and he moves to help her change her own shirt before she shoos him away. “I will come out later – go and speak with him. You might like to deliver my threat in advance,” Patricia says, and grabs his hands. “He has horrendous manners and is unspeakably ugly, but he _is_ your brother. What is important is that he is here now.”

Zed nods, ashamed at being so nervous. It seemed much easier when he had all that anger to hold on to. “Yeah, I know. It’s gonna be okay.” He’s not sure who he’s trying to convince with that, but if he can get through the first thirty seconds without someone pulling out a buzz-axe it really _might_ be okay. “I’m just gonna…go out there.”

Patricia lifts herself up on her toes to kiss him one last time, then turns him towards the door and gives him a push. “ _Go_.”

“I’m…I’m goin’.” Zed opens the door and walks out into Fyrestone, where his ‘forbidden brother’ is waiting for him. 

Ted is standing with his hands on his hips, looking over at the Marcus Munitions vendor that’s fallen over on its side, but he turns when he hears Zed walking up behind him. “She gonna pop outta nowhere with a shotgun, or am I safe for now?” Ted asks cautiously. He looks just like Ned, Zed thinks. Just like _him_.

“You’re good for now, but it’s thin ice from here on out,” Zed replies. “Where’d Ned get off to?”

Ted lifts one shoulder in a half-shrug that Zed hasn’t seen for…has it _really_ been thirty years? “Who knows? He’s around.” The toes of those Atlas-issued boots start drawing patterns in the dirt. “I fucked up by takin’ her. Just wanted your attention, is all.”

“You sure as fuck got it.” 

“She’s a live one; threw up on me twice,” Ted admits. 

It surprises a laugh from him, and the last of the awkwardness disappears as Zed strides forward to clasp his brother’s hand. “It’s good t’see you again, you ugly old bastard.” The handshake changes into a back-pounding hug, and then to an embrace between two people who’ve missed each other desperately. There’s even a few tears, though neither of them will ever admit it.

Not even a full Pandoran day has passed; Zed’s already regained a brother, and he’s going to be a father. 

Everything’s going to be just fine.


End file.
